Whiting: Woman sends 28,000 presents to troops

Dec. 10, 2013

Updated 3:20 p.m.

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Working at her dining room table, Ann McAfee assembles gift packages for deployed troops. The volunteer for Operation Interdependence has sent more than 28,000 C-Rats to overseas troops. They are a Civilian Ration, a care package for those on the front lines. The quart bags contain items such as tissue, granola bars, instant coffee, lotion, toothpaste, and cotton swabs to clean weapons from incessant sandstorms. This time of year she also includes handwritten Christmas cards. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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C-Rat contents await assembly on Ann McAfee's MIssion Viejo dining room table. The quart bags contain items such as tissue, granola bars, instant coffee, lotion, toothpaste, and cotton swabs to clean weapons from incessant sandstorms. This time of year she also includes handwritten Christmas cards. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Ann McAfee lugs a container of packing boxes in her MIssion Viejo home which is filled with items donated to Operation Interdependence to be assembled into plastic bags and sent to troops. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Ann McAfee holds a C-Ration bag. Behind her are 750 of the kits boxed, waiting to be delivered. The quart bags contain items such as tissue, granola bars, instant coffee, lotion, toothpaste and cotton swabs to clean weapons from incessant sandstorms. This time of year she also includes handwritten Christmas cards. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Working at her dining room table, Ann McAfee assembles gift packages for deployed troops. The volunteer for Operation Interdependence has sent more than 28,000 C-Rats to overseas troops. They are a Civilian Ration, a care package for those on the front lines. The quart bags contain items such as tissue, granola bars, instant coffee, lotion, toothpaste and cotton swabs to clean weapons from incessant sandstorms. This time of year she also includes handwritten Christmas cards. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Ann McAfee prepares to pack instant coffee, a favorite of front line troops, into the gift bags she assembles. McAfee of MIssion Viejo, a volunteer for Operation Interdependence, has sent more than 28,000 C-Rats to overseas troops. They are a Civilian Ration, a care package for those on the front lines. The quart bags contain items such as tissue, granola bars, instant coffee, lotion, toothpaste, and cotton swabs to clean weapons from incessant sandstorms. This time of year she also includes handwritten Christmas cards. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Ann McAfee of MIssion Viejo, pauses to reflect on a thank you note she was sent from an officer whose deployed troops received Operation Interdependence C-Rations. She said, "I know what this is about; when my husband was deployed I sent him packages. I heard about this and I knew this was something I wanted to get involved with." JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Working at her dining room table, Ann McAfee assembles gift packages for deployed troops. The volunteer for Operation Interdependence has sent more than 28,000 C-Rats to overseas troops. They are a Civilian Ration, a care package for those on the front lines. The quart bags contain items such as tissue, granola bars, instant coffee, lotion, toothpaste, and cotton swabs to clean weapons from incessant sandstorms. This time of year she also includes handwritten Christmas cards. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Working at her dining room table, Ann McAfee assembles gift packages for deployed troops. The volunteer for Operation Interdependence has sent more than 28,000 C-Rats to overseas troops. They are a Civilian Ration, a care package for those on the front lines. The quart bags contain items such as tissue, granola bars, instant coffee, lotion, toothpaste, and cotton swabs to clean weapons from incessant sandstorms. This time of year she also includes handwritten Christmas cards.JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Pink isn't a color you expect to see on soldier's stationery. But somehow the upbeat color is perfect for this mission.

The pink note is a thank-you sent from Afghanistan to Ann McAfee, a woman who in the last eight years has quietly sent our men and women in uniform exactly 28,278 C-rats.

Never heard of a C-rat? Neither had I until I met McAfee. It's short for Civilian Ration, a quart-size bag filled with goodies for the brave who serve on the front lines.

Army Spc. Jessica Malcolm writes McAfee, “Your care packages are so wonderful! Now that the wind has picked up and the weather has gotten colder, the ChapStick and tissues really come in handy.”

With thousands of troops overseas and in a small-world moment, Malcolm mentions she grew up in Laguna Niguel.

But Malcolm's note also speaks to something deeper, something McAfee learned when she sent similar packages to her husband during his two tours in Vietnam.

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Putting together thousands of C-rats takes money, commitment, perseverance, time. But most of all it takes love.

We walk into McAfee's garage in Mission Viejo. Twenty-eight boxes are ready for pickup. Each is carefully packed with 25 quart bags.

It varies, but inside each bag is a mix of travel-size moist wipes, eye drops, tissues, lotions, candy, instant coffee, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, gum, games. But most important of all are the letters McAfee writes.

Each note is handwritten and different. Many have patriotic stickers such as American flags. But it's the words that mean so much to troops who serve in foreign lands.

“Fellow American,” McAfee writes in one note, “Thank you so much for your service to our country. We pray for your safe return to your loved ones. God Bless you and merry Christmas with love.”

McAfee looks at the boxes and explains that some troops receive no mail and when she packs, she doesn't see boxes.

Instead, McAfee sees people.

“This is a person-to-person deal,” this mother of three offers. “You have to love it, be made for it.”

You also have to run around like crazy.

• • •

Understand, McAfee works under the radar and without pay. While a volunteer collects the boxes and a nonprofit called Operation Interdependence takes care of shipping logistics, McAfee does her own fundraising, collecting, shopping.

McAfee, an area coordinator for Operation Interdependence, says her favorite haunts are dollar stores.

McAfee talks to troops every chance she gets to learn their most recent needs. Sometimes it's socks, other times it's cotton swabs to clean rifles from incessant sandstorms.

She learned about the yearn for instant coffee packs from an Iraq war veteran who mentioned Marines often need a caffeine jolt while on long night patrols.

“They put it under their tongues,” McAfee said, adding that small Butterfinger, Mars and Milky Way bars are nearly as popular.

Still, McAfee focuses on products that will last several days or weeks. She works hard to stretch her dollars and tracks down the least-expensive snack packages, the best buys in disposable razors.

This volunteer also works hard at fundraising.

• • •

One of McAfee's favorite stories isn't about a soldier or even a Marine – although she spent three tours with her Marine husband and the couple's growing family at Camp Pendleton.

Her favorite story is about a handyman she hired for a variety of chores. After she paid him, he handed her $20.

McAfee asked, “What's this for?”

“I've seen what you do,” the handyman replied. “It's a worthy cause.”

Over the years, McAfee has spoken to a variety of groups and now receives donations from the Republican Club and Veterans of Foreign Wars in Laguna Woods, a senior center in Laguna Niguel and the Rush Limbaugh Club of Orange County.

Her assembly line is the dining room table, unusually piled with dental floss, mouthwash, packs of jerky, packets of crackers. She acknowledges that what she calls her “project” has taken over her home. Her home office is headquarters, her garage is dispatch, her den serves as the supply room.

A retired bill collector, McAfee searches for words to explain her passion and gives up. Perhaps part of the answer is in her history.

• • •

McAfee grew up in Wisconsin and as a young woman was invited to attend the Army-Navy football game in Annapolis, Md. There, she met her future husband and for the next two decades she lived a military life.

The family moved 18 times in 20 years. And it seemed her husband was usually fighting overseas or taking classes. When her husband, now a retired lieutenant colonel, was in Vietnam he shared his wife's care packages with his buddies. “Every item,” McAfee learned, “was appreciated.”

During a local Republican Party meeting in 2005, McAfee learned about Operation Interdependence and how C-Rats combined with letters make up its cornerstone to serving frontline troops.

“In the spirit of the ‘no one left behind creed,'” the organization states, “enough C-rats are sent so that at mail-call everyone in that unit gets a package.”

McAfee takes her mission so seriously that she managed juggling volunteering while helping see her family through its worst crisis.

Several years ago, one of her four grandchildren was diagnosed with cancer when he was an infant. A series of photos shows the blond boy climbing a rope, doing somersaults. After a four-year struggle, little Cameron died.

• • •

A thank-you letter from Sgt. Maj. Ernest Hoopii, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Helmand Province, Afghanistan: “I can truly say we are a country of the kindest and most caring people on Earth. A country that sees to the needs of others who have nothing, a people that would give and ask for nothing in return.”

A letter from another Marine echoes Hoopii but is more personal: “My name is Captain Mike. The work you do truly boosts morale and provides a much needed message from home. The U.S. needs more patriots like yourself.”

McAfee works year-round. But this time of year is different. Instead of writing paper notes, she repurposes old Christmas cards, cutting off the front and writing on the inside flap.

In a light moment, McAfee shares the time a classroom was assigned to write notes. One student wrote, “Dear troops, we're being made to write you.”

I ask what she'll do when all the troops come home. But this woman is wise.

McAfee knows the U.S. will always have troops serving in distant lands.

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